How To Organize Emails In Gmail Using Labels And Filters

Labels and Filters:

The labels are just like the folders, only that you can also see them from the inbox. The best thing is that you can also use your labels to create sub-email accounts, using your main GMail ID. Isn’t it wonderful when you can create many sub e-mail IDs from your main e-mail ID? It is just like creating the sub-domains on your main domain website.

For creating a sub Gmail ID, firstly you will need to first create a label in your GMail account. For example, you could create labels with the names FaceBook, Official and so on. Then you could sign up for your FaceBook account using the ID [email protected]

Now whenever you get emails from FaceBook, all of them will be neatly archived in the FaceBook label. All that you’ll need to do is, just click on the FaceBook label and view all the messages that are sent to the [email protected] ID.

Isn’t this a wonderful way to create a sub e-mail ID for organizing the emails in your main GMail account?

You could find create new label from the button called ‘Labels’, which is located just above the first e-mail message

It is quite an easy procedure, and it should not take you more than a minute to create a Label.

Another important characteristic of making labels is that you can apply 2 or multiple labels on a single e-mail message.

Example – If you have labeled any of your colleagues e-mail under the label named ‘Official’, you could also add another label to it. For example you could create a label and name it, ‘Funny’.

Whenever you get a funny joke from your colleague, you could also label it under the label named Funny. Now, you could access that particular e-mail from both the labels, FaceBook and Funny.

Now the question arises, how do we make sure that the right emails get archived under the right labels?

This is where the GMail Filters feature comes into the picture. Filters, as the name suggests allow the segregating and archiving of the emails according to the criteria of our choices, when we receive then.

You could also use Filters to delete the emails by specifying your criteria. It could be according to the sender’s e-mail ID, the receivers e-mail ID, or with specific subject line, or with certain words in the e-mail.

Similarly, you could also use the Filters to mark any specific incoming emails under any Label of your preference.

The emails which you receive on your sub Gmail ID, [email protected] will automatically end up in your label named FaceBook. If you feel that you do not require those annoying social networking emails from FaceBook, you could easily create a filter to delete all the incoming emails coming to that particular e-mail ID.

Creating Filters in the Gmail accounts is very simple. Again you can do this from the small link on the right hand side of the e-mail search box, or from the settings menu.

Now that we are familiar with Labels and Filters in Gmail, let us proceed with the methodology that I was talking about, with which we can use GMail accounts as online database system.

Let’s say, you are researching on Financial News and Updates.

Firstly, you’ll need to first start by creating a Label named, Financial, using one of the procedures mentioned above.

Secondly, you’ll need to create a Filter where you’ll need to enter your sub e-mail address, [email protected] in the TO field. Click on next, and in the next part, click on ‘Skip the Inbox’. This step ensures that the emails do not go to the inbox, and that they get archived directly under the particular Label. This is a very simple procedure and you should get a proper hang of it in a very little time.

Our groundwork is now completed. With this methodology, you could easily use Gmail as a database to store any online web pages. ?

@Harriette – Filters are great way to remember stuff. The ‘Plus addressing’ feature offered by GMail is another interesting feature that helps you organize your emails in a better manner. However, going further, there might be problems with + addressing, I’m sure future options, if they already are not doing it, will throw errors for the + addressing.

Hey, thanks for this article. I’ve always wanted to organise my GMail account especially since I have a subscription to “Dictionary.com’s Spanish Word of the Day” and I more often than not do not or cannot read these messages. They’ve been filling up my inbox with unread messages for a long time and until I read your article, I never knew what that “Create a filter” link did. So, thanks.

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@Nirmal – Thanks for your input. Can you please tell me the nature of the error ? I tried a sample registration and it went through fine. I’m clueless about the error :/ . Can you please guide me to the actual problem you encountered ?